I had the same issue, but now the Indian Certification web site is available again. Also accessible on archive (dot) org.
The MTCTE of the CCR2116 sticker ends with *1305. so it is NOT RUT901.
Too much speculation and assumptions in order to draw these conclusions. Like it was already stated, the Canadian document above doesn't say anything about default passwords to be in place. In fact, many security guidelines recommend changing default passwords regardless whether they are unique per device or not.
Zero sectors written is not a good indicator to determine whether the device is new or not. At least for some devices a Netinstall will clear that.
There can be many other theories that could also explain the reason these devices ended up there. In my personal opinion, @Amm0 's guess is the most probable one—someone booted up the device, was overwhelmed by all the options and the lack of user-friendly wizard, and gave up.
Yep, but the curiosity about the original path the device took remains.
The MTCTE (and/or TEC) marking should be enough to assume that the original destination of the device was India and likely some kind of "official" government supply batch.
If that label Is applied in factory, as I believe, It could be a mistake, some kind of co-mingling in the warehouse or during shipping.
Or there can be other reasons.
Surely Canada and India are not neighbouring countries, so It Is unlikely that that router was loaded "on the wrong truck" by some local distributor.
Or newer units simply include the India markings... It still has the EU/CE/FCC/UK things too. Historically there were -US as part of the model# on some wireless devices that restricted frequencies, so if there are regional difference that are not included in model# IDK...
I'm still lost if the "What is wrong with you, MikroTik?" is solely that the unit came without a stickered password, despite the newsletters claim "we are rolling out default password on our hardware"? In the MikroTik dictionary the "will take some time" phraseology could mean a decade, so after 3 years that "all"‡ did not reach this particular CRS is hardly a surprise especially since it's from the used market.
‡ the word "all" is actually not used in newsletter about default password, but agree it is loosely implied. And I want to say in some release/other thread MikroTik suggested the "sticker passwords" were only on home model, not professional models.
Do you know if they use Ubiquiti devices?
With shitposts like this I hope that you don't.
Thank you, that was very kind of you.
Not sure who you are asking about, but I don't know anyone who uses Ubiquity, sorry.
You said "likely a government purchase", so I was asking about the government.
Don't know about others, but Ubiquiti still uses to this day the default ubnt/ubnt combo. Not null password, but regardless it acts like one. If the government is so strict with this "prohibition of null password" policy even right after purchasing, then it has little choice when it comes to networking providers.
well... I did not think I would be writing this here, but here is a different angle on this story - a honourable politician.
There is a government agency called "Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED)". Among other things it is responsible for certification of telecom equipment in Canada. Until not so long ago, this honourable politician was at the helm of this agency. In 2021, Rogers Communications (a large Cable and Wireless ISP in Eastern Canada) entered into an agreement to acquire Shaw Communications, a Western ISP Cable Company in a deal valued $26 Billion which will take two years to complete. Just before this politician vacated his office ISED mailed out letters offering people $10/mo internet for good program.
I also received the letter:
During the merger of two cable companies, in July of 2022, a largest in recent history internet outage in Canada affected 12 million people disrupting banks payments, 911 Emergency services, and Mobile users - caused by a routine internal maintenance update that went wrong. According to the Canadian Telecommunications Commission and Rogers, a coding error during a phased upgrade to Rogers' core IP network accidentally deleted a routing filter. This caused a massive data overload that crashed their distribution routers, effectively taking wireless and wireline networks offline for over 15 hours. Some customers were disrupted for days.
The politician would soon join Rogers Communications, but just before that he would help customers navigate the innovations and technology landscape as an investment banker.
In 2023 after Rogers Communications completes acquisition of its rival - Shaw Communications, a Western Internet Cable/TV provider, he gets a job at Rogers Communications.
Fast forward to May of 2026. Last month he resigns from Rogers Communications, and officially enters back into the politics.
Certainly blank password stickers have nothing to do with any of the above events, agencies, people, or companies (whether large or small). Any dates, sequences of events are unrelated, and are explained by pure coincidence. The resemblance of sticker found on Mikrotik networking equipment sold in Canada with Indian certification authority is mere coincidence. Whoever tried googling the Indian MTCTE: 376801305 found on the back of the Mikrotik Router will find absolutely nothing, most likely because such certificate either doesn't exist, (or most likely) because of a human error.
I have a feeling that there is more than just a few "open box" routers at the above mentioned Electronics Recycling facility - they have multiple locations across the entire country. The recently manufactured Mikrotiks CCR2116/CCR2004 with the latest HW revisions - I don't know how many, but I think they are distributed across several regions, all destined for recycling, not because they are bad, but just because the newer, more powerful Ampere Altras are coming soon. The recycled routers can be just spares sitting on a shelf - a reserve emergency stock, or, maybe... maybe they are recycled just because. I noticed that this Electronics Recycler have introduced some significant changes to how it lists their items - all changes just in the course of one week, with many newly listed used Mikrotik models appeared - along with new "open box" CCR models. This Electronics Recycler has never had this many Mikrotik models listed before. I had good discounts at this place in the past up to 75% off on some. They ship worldwide. For the record, I'm not affiliated with them in any way - if anyone is interested, they take offers, just saying.
I understand and apologize in advance if some may find this long post boring, or offensive. There is a lot to digest here, but I'm so fucking tired of watching all the shit that is happening in this world that is not even funny anymore. And especially tired of paying taxes, and I think a change in this country is well overdue.
And now that I think of it - maybe the sticker issues reported here are not Mikrotik's fault. Anyone with $30 can buy a printer on Amazon and start printing pretty labels.
I'm not sure, but to me this sounds somewhat like a conspiracy theory combined with a claim of corruption. However, focusing on the specific claim below:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260117005441/https://tec.gov.in/public/Equipment-certified-under-MTCTE
IMHO the official inquiry should be sent to the appropriate office to find out the details.
Solving that puzzle is outside our knowledge. Maybe @randomwalk is the contemporary taxi driver from "Conspiracy theory" movie? 
Now that I've seen the trailer, how have I not seen this film before? Added to my watchlist. 
Taxi drivers have no easy peasy life. Mel Gibson, Robert Deniro ... life is brutal and needs tough guys
Indian govt so strict huh
who knew
Before MikroTik devices got that random password, there already was a change that on the first login you had to change the password from blank to something else. The only way to have a router with blank passwords in operation is to have it all in defaults settings and never logged in. But in that case it would not be accessible from the internet side.
Of course before that change there were many routers in operation with blank password and destroyed firewall config so it was open to the internet...
But I do not think it is the only reason to dump MikroTik devices. E.g. over here the established companies that do network management for corporate customers usually claim they have no knowledge about MikroTik and their admins are all educated in Cisco, Juniper, etc. So they cannot manage your network unless all routers are replaced by brands they know.
Personally I think a good admin should be able to admin any device, and it is mainly AI-like admins who have been trained to jump through specific hoops without really understanding what they are doing that are the problem in this case. But I guess these are easier to hire than competent people.
I believe you could manually close that dialog/popup and continue with blank password.
Problems logging into a router - #26 by rextended
actually not. In Winbox you could simply close the "change password" window. On CLI you simply skipped it by Ctrl+c.
I have never experienced anywhere else, that you can bypass such prompts so easily. Or bypass at all.
Well, a forced password change and/or disabling routing without a password change is "design-not-chosen" to solve the admin/no-password problem that lead the various DoS amplification attacks caused by folks NOT securing routers. The per-device "sticker password" was what was choose instead, and they left the older Ctrl-C and WinBox skip the same.
To me the "issue" here is that, to me at least, is is actually the plan that ALL routers include CRS/etc have "sticker"? Or is it expected that they come with -u admin: as "professional" routers. The newsletter is only reference to the scheme.
So IMO there a doc failure that this is not clear.
Only consumer oriented devices come with unique password. "Pro" devices do not.
In that case none of the pro devices from most of big name companies could not be used.